


The Inaugural Meeting of the Screwed-Over Sidekick Society

by simplifyingforces (vigorousplasmids)



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Gen, Robin Bonding Hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vigorousplasmids/pseuds/simplifyingforces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things you just can't let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inaugural Meeting of the Screwed-Over Sidekick Society

“We have gone too far; we do not know how to stop…  
In this unlighted cave…we have no sense of direction.”  
\-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, excerpts from an untitled poem you can find [here](http://rinabeana.com/poemoftheday/index.php/2009/11/15/we-have-gone-too-far-we-do-not-know-how-to-stop-by-edna-st-vincent-millay/).

* * *

"Have you ever considered it?" Tim asks, his breath ghosting out into the winter air. Up on the roof of some nameless Gotham skyscraper, legs dangling precariously over the edge, he feels safe.  As long as he doesn't look up.

A snort, and then – "You're an idiot," floats down to him from above. Jason is standing a foot away from him, his foot tapping methodically on the ledge as he looks over his shoulder away from Tim, as if he’d rather be anywhere than here.

Tim tolerates a couple minutes of silence (God knows he’s used to much longer), the city rolled out like a blanket beneath him. His fingers feel like death gripping the molding, and he’s not sure when he’ll ever get over being in Jason’s presence. They’re friendly now, and somehow they’ve gotten in the habit of meeting up every so often after patrol, but it’s usually only a half hour or so of contemplative silence before Jason becomes too restless to sit any longer and takes off to inflict more pain.

He clears his throat, half nervousness and all determination. "I used to think about it. All the time, actually. What it would be like to just...be," He glances up quickly at the inscrutable Red Hood before looking out steadily at the city. Patrol has been over for hours. He's not ready to go home yet, to stare at his empty bed with tired eyes that won’t stay closed. When was the last time they had – any of them – slept at this hour, peacefully and like rocks buried miles beneath the sea?

"Did you," Jason's reply is flat and monotone, strangely devoid of emotion. It's one of his easiest tells, Tim thinks. Jason is – has always been – such unrestrained passion and fire; without it, he's almost unrecognizable.

"You really were a shitty replacement," Jason says as he moves to take a seat next to Tim, and he feels strange acceptance and comfort in the statement.

"It's just..." Tim squints and swallows, as if words could appear from air, "after Steph and Dad and Kon, and then after _Bruce_ , I just realized there was nothing else. I never even graduated high school," he says, sounding petulant to his own ears even as the words come out.

Jason snorts again, and how he sounds so contemptuous from a single sound, Tim still can’t figure out. Did he learn it from Bruce? Wally had told him once that you could create a dictionary out of Bat monosyllables, and the longer he spends away from Gotham, the more he thinks that’s true.

"Join the fucking club, kid.  The screwed-over sidekick society, yeah?" Jason spits out as his knife methodically raps against the ledge.  "God knows we all wanted to," he exhales with a mix of resignation and anger. Despite the sentiment he looks almost wistful, Tim thinks, if that's a possible emotion to decipher through helmet, mask, and a ton of emotional baggage and daddy issues. It's not like he doesn't carry the same.

"Do you think you'll ever be able to stop?" he asks, and for a second he sees it. A modest home in the southwest Gotham suburbs, where the homes are a steal but the schools are still decent and the average crime is a stolen bicycle (and how sad is it that he only knows this from _doing research for Batman_ ); waking up to sloppy kisses from lovers, children, and dogs and going to work nine-to-five. Would Jason be happy that way? He looks over at his brother-idol, the jagged edges that surround every inch of him, the sense of anticipation that governs his every move, and he thinks that if there’s anyone that doesn’t know how to stop, it’s the second Boy Wonder.

As if on cue, Jason turns abruptly and sticks the knife in his belt loop, a picture of years of habit in the vigilante business.

"Fuck all if I know what's going to happen in my life, Replacement,” he responds as he looks out over the skyline. “It's not like I've had much control over it so far." He rocks back and forth, his body swinging over the edge as his legs dangle, deceptively docile. He looks like he's newly teenaged and ready to face the night all over again. Tim represses the urge to glance over his shoulder for Batman.

"I figure when the world gives me a break, it'll give me a pretty big sign. Right now, the only cosmic signs I've been getting is that I don't call the shots." Without warning, he launches a grapple, his body springing up to grasp the line. Tim eyes him evenly, silently, just like he lives.

“You could, Jason. We all could, couldn’t we?” When he asks, he’s not sure just who he’s trying to reassure.

Jason sighs audibly, and cocks his head, taking in Tim's appearance or expression or the rising sun for all Tim knows.  Jason’s always been emotion incarnate, but he’s not transparent. "Look, Tim. You know it was always too late for all of us. No use harping on shit that'll never be.

"You'd never survive it, kid. You'd always be laying there at night, like you do, just fucking laying there, thinking _what if_? That hero shit never goes away.” He lets out a sharp barking laugh. “Fuckin' B, huh?" He turns to stare northward for a moment as if he’s contemplating a decision, then lets out a war whoop as he unceremoniously takes off, his form powerful yet no less graceful for it.

After a moment of watching Jason disappear into the shadows, Tim lies back, staring at the brightening sky.

"Fucking B," he mutters to himself, thinking of alleyways and acrobats and all the decisions that led him to this moment. He’s not Jason, but when he closes his eyes he can't see himself anywhere else but on the rooftops, part of the night. He's seen himself there since he woke up with a Canon on the nightstand next to one in a long line of goodbye notes from his parents. He can still remember his mother’s elegant cursive, the way the looping “y” in Timothy would take up the entire bottom half of the notepad and his father would add some chicken scratch smile within its margins.

Sometimes Tim misses the margins, but –

Batman needed a Robin and Tim needed purpose and does a mutually beneficial situation make things right? The road of vigilantism spirals endlessly in all directions, and is it so bad that Tim can't find the exit? He's still not sure he wants to.

As the sun makes its way over the horizon, he jumps up, his stance a smaller mimicry of Jason’s from only a few minutes before. He sighs as he takes off, letting the grapple pull him along the never-ending path of danger and deception he’s followed since he knew how to open his bedroom window.

* * *

Five hours later and Jason's zooming through the gates of the manor, waving shamelessly to a security system that always recognizes him but never seems to classify him as a threat. He grins to himself under his (boring) black motorcycle helmet as the gate opens. Batman always was a big softie.

When he gets through the door, he thinks, he'll tell B about Number 3's existential crisis and then he'll jet. But maybe, just this once, he’ll stay and ask about when Bruce first got lost in the cave he calls his mind. He's not so sure Bruce will be as forthright as he was back in the days when he still knew how to engage in actual conversation, but it’s worth a shot.

Damn the Replacement for making him think too much about his psyche.

As he rounds the corner of the drive, he thinks of those late night stakeouts when Bruce would just let go, when his stance became less proud and more childlike and Jason felt like Batman was less of a dad and more of a friend. Maybe it was pathetic, but in those days, Jason just wanted to hold his hand and show him that everything would be alright. He’d had some weird sense of protectiveness for B back then, God knows why. Maybe it was because it really was always too late for all of them, even B. Hell, _especially_ B. And, he thinks, frowning beneath the helmet as he parks the bike on the manor’s front lawn, since B started this, all of it, from the nightlife to the gadgets to the psychological issues that would never fucking die, did that mean they were all just playing pieces caught up in the chess game of B's own tormented mind? How fucked up was _that_?

Jason shakes out his hair as he lets the helmet fall to the grass; his face feels naked in the midday sun. As he makes his way up the walk, Bruce opens the door. He looks tired and gray, and Jason feels the years widen the gulf between them. Before he can change his mind and stumble back to the bike, something in Bruce’s expression stops him. Somewhere underneath the wrinkles and the fatigue and the sense of melancholy that’s surrounded the man like a cloud ever since Jason’s come back from the grave there is – contentment? Jason shrugs before he lets himself wonder too much about it; he doesn’t have the energy to analyze and he doesn’t want to give the old man any false hope.

“Jason. Welcome home,” Bruce offers, his voice a hoarse whisper in the open air. “I’ve missed you,” he says, tentative and slow.

Jason nods silently and slides his way past Bruce, making sure there’s no way he can be mistaken for wanting anything so much as a hug. Bruce’s eyes follow him, softer than he’s seen them since he was fourteen and making him proud with straight A’s in junior high for the first time.

Taking a deep breath, he enters the manor, where the nostalgic smells of the place invade his nostrils and the well-worn patch of carpet where Jason used to show Bruce his practice flips on early weekday mornings is staring back at him. He turns sharply to look at Bruce, who is watching him like there’s never been anything else worth looking at in the world, his eyes so bright it pains him to look too long.

Sometimes, he thinks, closing his eyes against Bruce’s piercing gaze, he hates the way his life has gone since the day he was born. But sometimes — he envisions Tim sitting on the rooftop, impossibly small and transparent as he asks questions Jason’s never known the answers to – he doesn’t mind the path his life’s taken.

As he reopens his eyes to brazenly meet Bruce’s unyielding stare with his one of his own, he thinks that sometimes he doesn’t mind being the pawn.


End file.
